Virtualization+Security

BSidesLondon 2012 – The Feedback

More than two months passed since BSidesLondon 2012 attracted a crowd of over 300 participants, volunteers, speaker, press and sponsors; high time to go through the feedback forms many of you dropped of in exchange for one of the Yubikeys we handed out (as long as stock lasted). Thanks to everyone who took the time putting their thoughts on that form and allow the speakers as well as the organisers to critically review their performance based on your feedback.

The feedback is based on roughly 220 forms. Most of the forms did include information on the event itself but lacked some or all speaker ratings.

The event – all votes overview

This view shows the distribution of all registered votes across the four areas related to the event. The majority of the votes falls on ‘five’ and ‘four’ with some outliers especially in category ‘Catering’ – more on that further down. In general we’re happy to see that most of you thought that everything is fine but please feel free to be more critical next time!

The event – averages

This view shows the average votes for each of the four sections. Can you spot the problem? So in short – we understand that quite a few of you were not exactly knocked off their socks by the quality, amount or selection of refreshments/food.

The event – Quality of information prior the con

It seems we did a rather good job keeping everyone in the loop via social media and otherwise based on your feedback.

The event – Quality of the location

And then there was the location; many of you shared how much you like the Barbican but not few expressed some concerns about the size of the location as well. As we were rushing from one corner to the other multiple times during the day we can certainly relate to that. It seems the opinions on this are mixed and any further BSidesLondon event will take this into consideration of course.

The event – Quality of catering

Concluding from the comments left on the forms the slight disapproval with the catering was largely due to lack of coffee throughout the day and the lack of vegetarian lunches later on. Oh, and to the person who complained about the missing muffins from BSidesLondon 2011 – i totally understand, missed them dearly as well! Again a point that will be discussed for any further events.

The event – Size of the con

This is a tricky one – maybe we should have asked the question slightely different as we can’t be sure whether you think the event was too big or too small based on the feedback. Some of the comments pointed to ‘make it bigger’ whereas others demanded to scale back.

The event – Would you recommend BSidesLondon?

Glad to see that so many of you would recommend the event to others! We’re really interested to hear from that one person who was so unhappy that s/he voted for ‘No’ tho.